The 1996 Atlantic album was a regular U.S. release, debuting three
months after the song compilation album for the film. That score album fell out of
print in the 2000's. The 2017 La-La Land album is limited to 3,000 copies and sold
at soundtrack specialty outlets for a retail price of $20.

Buy it... on the vastly superior 2017 album presentation if you
enjoy adventurous symphonic/electronic hybrid scores of significant
bravado, for Twister is one of the more rousing entries in the
disaster genre.

Avoid it... on the badly arranged 1996 album at all costs or if you
can never accept the idea of wailing electric guitars interspersed with
Aaron Copland-inspired Americana spirit in this context.

Twister: (Mark Mancina) Written by Michael Crichton
and his wife, Ann-Marie Martin, the preposterous but entertaining
Twister competed well with the likes of Independence Day
and The Rock during a busy 1996 summer season. The disaster film
contained the same nonstop pacing as Jan De Bont's previous adventure,
Speed, and through the sheer energy of that tempo and a few
mind-boggling special effects, Twister was eye candy at its best.
The affable duo of Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton lead a group of storm
chasers on a mission to release a scientific instrument in the eye of a
tornado that promises to yield incredible new information about the
storms. Extraordinary measures to film scenes naturally with giant fans
and real explosions stand convincingly even decades later. While the
disaster flick achieved mainstream success in both the short and long
term, the music for the film was equally attractive to audiences. For
the most part, this attraction led to the high sales of the rock song
compilation album for Twister. As per De Bont's desire, the film
was heavy with rock song applications, mixing the songs and hyperactive
orchestral score in an often choppy moment to moment set of transitions.
The song compilation album immediately hit the charts at the film's
opening, while score fans were forced to wait several months to enjoy
Mark Mancina's work for the film on its own. Not only was the summer of
1996 a bonanza for big budget action films, but it also served as a
formal introduction to the Media Ventures breakthrough in scoring
technology. The previous year, Hans Zimmer had introduced his electronic
action scoring mastery for the first time in Crimson Tide,
arguably in its most successful and masculine historical form. The next
summer, both The Rock and Twister would extend that sound
into the mainstream for good. Much of the post-production crew for the
two scores overlapped. On Mancina's part, he built upon his propulsive
style in Speed and combined his pronounced percussion and guitars
with an orchestral, Aaron Copland-inspired style of Americana that
flourished when allowed to breathe in the film. For traditional
orchestral score fans, the resulting sound was easier to grasp than
The Rock due to an overriding loyalty to orchestral and choral
coloration.

The trick to appreciating Mancina in his action mode is
accepting the accentuated rock percussion elements, occasional electric
guitars, and the somewhat simplistic orchestration of brass that causes
his melodies to sound rather generic or synthetic at times. For some
listeners, his music fails to excel at neither the orchestral nor the
electronic realms, but the composer, like other early colleagues of
Zimmer, occasionally does flash greatness. To his credit, though,
Twister remains superior in intelligence to both the composer's
Speed scores, at least making a substantial attempt to weave
melodic and textural complexity into the otherwise rather stale sound of
slapping percussion and staccato string rhythms. Mancina applies
woodwinds extremely well in the score, everything from flutes to
bassoons performing whirling motions to reflect wind. And the electric
guitar, while sometimes exposing itself as a simple tool of masculinity
(it's hideously out of place in "Walk in the Woods"), embodies a keen
sense of dread in a cue like "Cow" that melds well with the orchestra to
reach the desired, gut-sinking effect. There exist several themes and
secondary motifs in Twister, the main Copland-inspired theme
matching Bruce Broughton-like Western bravado with snazzy appeal in the
score's highlights. Heard immediately in "Wheatfield," a favorite cue of
the composer, this idea permeates several later cues and switches to
minor for suspense purposes. The theme, representing the landscape's
immense beauty, introduces the most impactful secondary idea in the
score, Mancina's noble action theme, at 1:24 into "The Hunt Begins." By
"House Visit," this second theme takes on a purely militaristic tone in
its percussive marching. These two themes are interwoven into nearly
every cue in the score, and they are frequently joined by the composer's
third identity, a bass region growl at 1:58 into "The Hunt Begins" that
is often the domain of bass strings as a tool of instilling a feeling of
doom. While Mancina does rely heavily upon these identities in between
the songs, he does offer the theme some diverse development at times, as
in the softer tones for the main theme in "Futility" with the help of
acoustic guitar. The chorus supplies a two-note motif of wonder at times
("The Sky" and "Drive-In Twister") for shots of ominous clouds, and the
choral shades become more traditionally apocalyptic as the story
proceeds. The groan bass motif remains more effective to the very end,
however, at conveying fear at any synchronization point necessary.

While most listeners are likely to remember the score
for Twister by the snazzy electric guitars in the rousing chase
scenes and the occasional choral majesty, the more subtle orchestral
touches are certainly the real attraction in the work. These ominous
sounds often resemble snarling creatures when merged with the final
sound effects within the film and are a fantastically smart use of music
for the advancement of the story. The technique ends the film with a
faint, dying performance that reminds us well that there will indeed be
another tornado season next year. Mancina's use of tingling electronic
rhythms, akin to Jerry Goldsmith's of the era, is handled beautifully in
the full "End Title" cue at 1:07. The original 1996 album for
Twister was presented badly, several notable cues missing and
those included out of order and ending with a hideous duo of concluding
tracks. The comical "William Tell Overture/Oklahoma Medley" cue is an
unacceptably stupid and barely tolerable minute of mutation between the
William Tell Overture and the title song to the musical Oklahoma.
Why it was necessary to include this terrible vocal performance here
instead of additional Mancina cues was beyond reason. Likewise, the Van
Halen written and performed track at the end of the album (one of two
such contributions to the film), while beginning with a promising
transition from orchestral and choral style to hard guitars, is simply
too long. It languishes in false dramatics for a whole eight minutes of
guitars that don't match any of those used in tandem with the other
players throughout the score. In 2017, La-La Land Records supplied a
proper release of Mancina's score, really allowing the composition and
sharp recording to shine. The quality of the mix on both albums is
strong, but the expanded product especially exposes the nuances of the
recording. The guitars and chorus in "Cow" are particularly layered
magnificently. The 2017 album is highly recommended, and it will help
Twister cement its place as one of Mancina's most memorable and
defining scores. The raw enthusiasm of "Wheatfield" (which features an
abbreviated opening and some stage sounds at the start of the 1996
album; this is supplied as a bonus on the 2017 product) and beauty of
"Downdraft" ("The Big Suck") were a surprisingly impressive introduction
to the composer for listeners who never caught on to Speed, and
the score still remains a fan favorite. The score gets caught in a
whirlwind of noise with the sound effects and songs in context, but the
2017 album finally clears the skies on this somewhat repetitive but
impressively enjoyable hybrid work. @Amazon.com: CD or
Download

Music as Written for the Film: ****

Music as Heard on the 1996 Album: **

Music as Heard on the 2017 Album: ****

Overall: ****

Bias Check:

For Mark Mancina reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31
(in 13 reviews)and the average viewer rating is 3.13
(in 9,460 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.